Many who fail, teach.
Teachers entrusted with helping city students pass standardized tests are regularly flunking their own certification exams – even after taking prep courses paid for by the Board of Education, a Post investigation found.
Of 118 uncertified teachers who took subsidized prep courses at City College last year, 70 flunked one or both of the exams required to get their teaching licenses.
That’s a 59 percent failure rate.
Most of those who failed are still teaching in city schools, according to board records and a Post survey.
The test results for another 92 uncertified teachers who took the 3-month-long cram course have not yet been released by the state Education Department.
Teachers have five years to pass the two certification exams to obtain their permanent licenses. One of the exams is in liberal arts and science; the other is in classroom skills.
Many of those who enrolled in the subsidized classes had only one more chance at certification before losing their jobs. Others were in hard-to-fill teaching slots – in bilingual education, foreign languages, math and science.
All teachers taking the special prep program had received “satisfactory” job ratings from their principals.
City College and board officials defended the prep courses and the results, stressing that more than 40 percent had finally passed a test they had failed repeatedly.
“These are teachers who are chronic failures. It’s a miracle,” said Albert Posamentier, dean of the teaching program at City College.
“You have someone who failed nine times. Why would they pass the 10th time? It’s our intervention that got them through,” he said.
But he acknowledged it’s a “sad state” when so many teachers can’t pass a competency exam.
The board’s personnel director, Howard Tames, said he would like to see all teachers who take the prep course pass the exams, but will take what he can get.
“People are taking the course and passing the tests. It shows we are able to save nearly half the people,” he said.
A prominent education advocate said those who can’t pass the two exams should be yanked from the schools immediately.
“Some teachers just can’t pass the tests. They’re just not very bright. It’s as simple as that,” said Sol Stern of the Manhattan Institute, a government watchdog group that focuses on education.
In all, there are about 12,000 uncertified teachers in the city school system – about 12 percent of the teaching work force.
The board, desperate to fill positions with certified teachers, allocated $450,000 to have 440 uncertified teachers take the cram courses.
“These are people who failed the exam multiple times,” said Tames.
“They were told, ‘Take it, or you’re out.'”
But only 210 of the 440 teachers bothered to enroll.
A substantial number of the test-takers are bilingual teachers and teachers of foreign languages, and many, from other countries, learned English as a second language.
One board source familiar with the teaching force said many unlicensed instructors haven’t mastered English – and that’s why they keep flunking the two four-hour written tests.
Among the teachers who failed were some who had master’s degrees from teachers colleges.
Bronx PS 184 math teacher Victor Guzman failed the liberal-arts and Science test for the fourth time after taking the prep course.
“The course helped. But I haven’t passed the test yet. I’m going to take the test again this month,” said Guzman, who scored 210 – 10 points short of the 220 passing grade.
Guzman, a Dominican native who has been teaching for five years, earned a master’s from Columbia University’s Teachers College.
He has a state waiver to continue teaching because of a shortage of bilingual teachers.
A Bronx middle-school music teacher, who requested anonymity, failed the teaching-skills exam for the third time after taking the prep course.
“I thought I was very prepared. I’m very frustrated. I was so confident I was going to pass the test,” said the teacher, a Dominican native with degrees in performing arts from Bronx Community College and City College.
“I’m not giving up. I have to try harder to pass it,” he said.
One of those who took the prep course and passed the certification exams was John Hagan-Brown, a science teacher at Middle School 15 in The Bronx.
Hagan-Brown, who had failed “five or six times,” said the prep-course instructor “was pretty good, but the teachers taking the class were misbehaving. They were worse than elementary-school students. They were talking, talking and talking.”
Hagan-Brown, a native of Ghana who has as a master’s degree in biology and science education from Lehman College, said he was ready to quit if he had flunked again.
The test results are ominous for the city school system.
In 2003, a new state law bars anyone from teaching without passing the certification exams – and eliminates the emergency waivers currently offered by the state education commissioner.
This means thousands of teachers could be forced out of the system amid a wave of retirements that will make it necessary for the board to hire 40,000 to 50,000 new teachers over the next five years.